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Tuesday, May 13, 2014

Mother's Day

My writing group isn't meeting tonight, because I got invited to hear Sandra Tsing Loh read at a friend's house. She has a new book out called The Madwoman in the Volvo: My Year of Raging Hormones. Though I'd generally rather write with my writers than almost every other activity, I wanted to say yes to this invitation. I don't know from raging hormones (yet) and I like to be prepared for such eventualities. But what I want to write about today is Mother's Day.

I feel guilty saying this, because I know how hard Mother's Day can be for those who have lost theirs to either death or illness or painful choice; or for those who yearn to be mothers and aren't, or who were mothers and suffered the cruelest loss. But I have come to appreciate this holiday, and not just because my kids made me beautiful cards, gave me the day off and just plain exist. I hated it as a child, and in our family it was almost universally ignored until the three daughters became mothers ourselves and started getting cards, flowers (or resenting the lack thereof). Now we regularly thank our own mother. Now we get it.

In church yesterday, Steve said, "Every day should be mother's day. We owe a debt we can never pay back." And all of us had a mother, however imperfect. My life was changed when a wiser woman (not a mother herself) shared her own breakthrough: "I realized that the sometimes mean, sometimes crazy alcoholic mom I had was exactly the mother I needed to become the person I am." That statement set me free as a mother. Whenever I worried that I was wrecking my kids, I thought of this: the mother you get is the mother you need. For better or for worse, my kids got me. And mostly, it's for better. I have to trust that even when it's not so lovely--like when I ignore them for my iPhone, or yell at them for not showing up for violin practice--that somehow, someway, God can turn this to good: compost becomes flowers.

2 comments:

Beautifully said, Nerissa. I, too, have a multitude of conflicting feelings about Mother's Day, yet have made my peace with them and have decided to take the day for what it is (to me): a time to remember my own mom, whom I haven't had with me in body for 47 years (whoa, just writing that amazes me); give thanks for the gift of giving birth to my own beautiful babies and the gift of grace when one of them finished his time on earth way too soon for me; and appreciate the stepchildren and grandchildren I could never have predicted but love like my own babies.

Beautifully said, Nerissa. I, too, have a multitude of conflicting feelings about Mother's Day, yet have made my peace with them and have decided to take the day for what it is (to me): a time to remember my own mom, whom I haven't had with me in body for 47 years (whoa, just writing that amazes me); give thanks for the gift of giving birth to my own beautiful babies and the gift of grace when one of them finished his time on earth way too soon for me; and appreciate the stepchildren and grandchildren I could never have predicted but love like my own babies.

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About this Blog

This blog started in 2004 as a way for Nerissa and Katryna Nields to continue to blather to their fans while Katryna was on maternity leave after giving birth to her son. Mostly Nerissa posts because she has a great need to blather, but occasionally Katryna gets a word (or a cartoon) in. These days, we are preparing for the release of our 16th album, The Full Catastrophe. We are also mothers, and love to explore how our children and our roles as moms impacts our writing and music. We have written a book which came out in September 2011 called All Together Singing in the Kitchen: Creative Ways to Make and Listen to Music with Your Family.

Nerissa is the author of two other books; Plastic Angel (Scholastic, 2005), a story of two teen age girls who find purpose and meaning through friendship and music; and How to Be an Adult, a guide for 20 somethings who have need of a road map.

For the purposes of protecting the anonymity of her children, Nerissa's daughter is called "Elle" and her son is called "Jay" in these writings. Her husband Tom is referred to as "Tom," only without the quotation marks.